Jumpgate Evolution: Developer Journal: Herman Peterscheck on Graphics

Jumpgate Evolution Lead Producer Hermann Peterscheck continues his Developer Journal series on MMORPG.com, talking about graphics and its relevance to MMO gameplay:

Our position is that graphics do in fact play a major role in games, and they serve a specific role. The primary function of graphics is to immerse the player in your world and to provide meaningful information. The better the graphics accomplish these goals, the better experience a player will have. If we take two different kinds of games as examples: Crysis and World of Warcraft. Both of these (arguably) have good graphics, but they are vastly different. In one case the graphics are hyper realistic, high resolution, complex shaders and so on. In the other case the graphics are more cartoonish (or stylized as people like to say), far lower poly and texture resolution. The reasons for these decisions are complex, but in general Crysis is pushing the envelope of technology and Evolution, immersing the player in a world with qualities they have never seen before. The games that did this in the past, such as Quake and Unreal are no longer visually impressive in this same way. So as developers, we need to keep pace with the times, and technologies that allow us to push the envelope. In the case of World of Warcraft the number one goal is to keep accessibility high; the game has to run on as many machines as possible. This does not mean the game can look bad, thus Blizzard's strategy has been to use lower tech techniques to create the same visually compelling feeling. Big objects with bright colors and high contrast and saturation tend to help with this effect. This is, of course, an oversimplification, but it is important when discussing our approach to graphics in Jumpgate Evolution...

Read the full journal on MMORPG.com.